


Layers of Cool

by melwil



Category: West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melwil/pseuds/melwil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toby contemplates CJ and the cold</p>
            </blockquote>





	Layers of Cool

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2002

You hear her complaining about the cold a lot. It's funny, because you never thought she had sunshine running through her veins. But everyday she stands in the doorway of your office and she complains that it's getting colder, and there's nothing she can do that makes her warmer. She complains and she tells everyone how she used to be warm in winter. She tells you that she's getting too old for the cold now.

She stands in your doorway complaining about the cold and you can see her age slip away. You see a child bundled into an oversized coat, with the long sleeves catching on the wind as she runs in crazy circles. You can see her with a slightly upturned nose pressed against frosty windows, little steam circles appearing on the glass when she breathes. You can see her looking up at the adults around her, all of them complaining about the cold.

People in the White House laugh at her complaints, at the way she hugs herself until her arms disappear into the curve of her body. They laugh at the way she pulls her sleeves long over manicured fingertips, the way she stamps her feet when she doesn't think anyone is watching. She stamps her feet when she talks to you and vivid colour invades her cheeks. You wonder if anger makes her warmer because she yells more when the temperature drops and people begin to scuttle away from her. The whispers race around the building and people know to keep away from her.

She yells in the summer too. But it's a tired call, a yell melted in muggy, sweaty heat.

She tells everyone that she hates the cold but she sits outside anyway. She sits on one of the ornate stone benches in front of manicured lawns carefully cleared of dirty snow. The wind blows her hair away from her bare neck and her fingers fly to her throat to play with an invisible scarf. You watch her from the window in her office, a room where the heating makes you sweat and it quickly gets difficult to breathe.

There was a time when you believed what she said. There was a time when she said what she believed. She got angry a lot, regardless of the weather, because there were things worth getting angry about. She yelled at you because you could be a jackass, and she wanted to make sure that you knew this. Now you do stupid things just to make her yell. But there's no passion in her anger anymore, just a dry weariness.

She doesn't really know how many times you watch her. She doesn't really see you when you stand at the back of the briefing room, shielded by a single sheet of glass. She's too busy looking at the cameras, dodging the grenades reporters love to throw. She's a natural in front of the camera now, a natural with hours of camera experience. You remember a time when she was a little stiff and nervous, when you'd have to give her a drink to calm her after every successful press briefing. She grew out of that fast.

You watch her sitting in the cold and you wonder what she's looking at. Maybe she can see the tourists on the other side of the fence. You remember when the White House was shiny and new and you used to take walks with her to escape the craziness. You'd walk to the Lincoln Memorial or to the Vietnam Wall. The cold would bite at your ears and she'd complain about the cold and you were both a couple of tourists, like any other visitors to Washington.

You knows better than to get too close to her when it's cold, being close to her when she's like this would be plain dangerous. You stay inside, breathing internal heating, and you watch the way she sits in the cold. Sometimes she'll turn a little, and you'll catch a glimpse of her face, the vacancy that invades her eyes. You worry about these moods, about the way she slips in and out of them with such ease, about the way she stays in them for longer now.

You wish you could see her the way you did when you were younger and dumber. She laughed more then, a real throaty laugh that warmed everyone around her. She'd hold onto your arm and she'd laugh, and you'd feel like you were the most important man in the world. You don't think you've heard that laugh since you put Mendoza on the bench. She'd held onto your arm then too and warmth had run smoothly through your body.

She's sitting on the stone bench, and you want to warm her up. You want to take her scarf out to her. The long stripy one that she wraps around her neck again and again, until there's nothing but wool under her chin. It's like the scarves your mother used to make you wear. You would run around the playground with David, both of you in matching stripy scarves made from the left over wool from your sister's sweaters.

You've always enjoyed the cold a little more than a sane person should. You thinks it makes people warmer, that they're forced to huddle together a little more, to share the same heat. You hate to see her alone out there, cold and alone. This is a crappy city to be cold in.

You've always tried to share you warmth when you could. You've given all of your old winter coats to Goodwill. You organised a military funeral in the middle of winter. You've poured your heart out to a psychiatrist, because there was a chance that it might help someone. You used to help people in the homeless shelters on Christmas day, because usually Christmas didn't mean much to you, and you liked the thought you could be giving someone else a break.

You love to share your warmth, but there's no possible way to warm her. There's no way you could get through the thick layers of frosty air that she's wrapped around herself. There's no way for you to venture out there, to wrap your arms around her, to feel her tuck snugly under your arms. There's no comforting words you can toss to her, words that will heat her and bring the colour back into her cheeks. There's nothing you can do except stand behind a frosty window and watch her freeze.

One day, maybe, she'll see you watching her. One day she'll pull from her reverie and catch you from the corner of her eye. Maybe she'll be angry, but that'll be okay, because it would be the right thing to do. Maybe her anger will be warming and she'll finally begin to defrost. Or maybe she'll see you and it won't matter, she won't care. She'll look straight through you and you'll wonder if there was more she should have been doing, if there was some way you would have been able to save her.

But she doesn't see you, not yet anyway. So you stand by her window and blow tiny steam circles on the cold glass. You watch her sitting on a stone bench, looking at nothing, and you keep listening to her complaining about the cold. About how she never seems to be warm.


End file.
